Page 38 - Studio International - March 1974

finished. There's no need to put that fifth coat
on because it's really better the way it is, with
the fourth coat sanded. The linen was even a
little torn by the sanding, you could see that.
So I never put the fifth coat on. I called it
Unfinished Painting, but, of course, it was
finished' (Tuchman interview). And the
notion of 'weaving' was integrated with the
notion of degree-of-finish in Ryman's 1970
planning of the set of 50-inch-square oil on linen
`unfinished paintings' exhibited at the Dwan
Gallery in 1971 — as Unfinished I (one coat
brushed horizontally), Unfinished II (first coat
horizontal, second coat vertical), and
Finished III (horizontal, then vertical, then
horizontal) — for the progressive complexity of
evenly brushed texture as an apparent 'weave'
was 'finished' at that most economic density of
the paint's 'locking' into a surface cover.
The relationship between the 1965 and 1970
`unfinished paintings' is important to our
understanding of Ryman's procedures over the
extended time of his personal history. There is,
of course, the similar 'aesthetic problem' of
when-is-a-work 'finished' in both: and it could
be deduced from this (not wrongly) that Ryman
re-works questions raised by his own works.
But in 1965 this particular problem was raised
(and resolved) in the process of realizing another
aesthetic question (appearance of matte and
shine surfaces) whereas in 1970 Ryman
decided 'beforehand' not only to do a set of
`unfinished paintings' but also what would be
the beginning and FINISH of that problem.
Doing this in a set of individual works isolating
separate stages of the problem's resolution and
`finished' to his satisfaction, Ryman extended
into a far more analytically complex paradox
structuring his work(ing): in this case, the
preconceiving of the 'finish' of 'unfinished'.
But this 1970 preconception was not just an
idea abstracted from generalized working
procedures : having done an 'unfinished painting'
itself established a particular preconception
for further exploration. And, as for all good
artists at some point in their development,
this sort of extended exploration of past
personal preconceptions is very important to
Ryman.
I make an especially heavy point of this, for it
relates to an aspect of the 1972 four etchings
which is not otherwise readily apparent: and
that is that its explorations of all aspects of
`line' — as thin or thickened into 'area', as straight
or curved, as distinguishable through contrasts
of light/dark or of hue — within one piece is not
a 'new' venture into an apparently traditional
`composition', but is to be found also in Ryman's
early work like the 1959 tracing paper collage
reproduced here. The combination of entities
visually dissimilar (no matter how 'like' in
conceptual category) necessarily involves

(Top) Winsor 5, 1965. Oil on linen, 624 x 62 in.
Coll : Mr and Mrs H. Fischbach, New York
(Bottom) Mayco, 1966. Oil on linen, 76 x 76 in.
Coll : Mr and Mrs H. Fischbach, New York
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